FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RILEY TO DISPLAY WORK IN UNIVERSITY MUSEUM MARCH 1 - 22

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo., Feb. 28, 2002 – The University Museum at Southeast Missouri State University will host an exhibition of six large-scale giclée prints by Sarah Riley, professor of art at Southeast Missouri State University, which opens on March 1.

The exhibition, entitled “Romancing the Dance,” will be on display in the University Museum on the Southeast campus until March 22. The public is invited to a reception for the artist on March 1, from 4-6 p.m.

Riley said, “This series of giclée prints was developed during my sabbatical leave from Southeast during Fall 2000. During this sabbatical, I took many photographs of three members of the Aspen/Santa Fe Dance Company. These photographs, in combination with my drawings of the same dancers, were the start of my first, fully developed, digitally manipulated images.”

“Later, I became fascinated with the purity of the dance medium as revealed in the photographs alone. The six prints in this exhibition are a combination of layered and manipulated images enhancing the physicality of the original dance photos as well as some of the earlier combined images, she said.”

“I have used the photographic medium as many printmakers have done, as a starting point. The photographs are scanned into a computer and re-worked in the PhotoShop program,” she said. “The computer acts as the matrix, similar to the concept of a metal plate or a litho stone as the matrix for a traditional print. Once the image is ready to print, it can be printed using an inkjet printer and permanent pigment-based inks onto a rag paper.

“As a printmaker, I see endless possibilities for the digital medium by itself or in combination with the more traditional forms of the print, such as intaglio, lithography, woodcut and screenprinting.” Riley added, “These pieces are printed on an archival rag paper that gives them the softer look of a lithograph or screenprint. I see the roles of fine art and digital prints as interchangeable and interpenetrating not as separate and isolated genres.”

Riley received partial funding for this exhibition from a grant from the University's Grants and Research Fund.

She holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a bachelor of fine arts from Virginia Commonwealth University. She was chair of the Department of Art at Southeast from1994 to 2000.

Hours for the University Museum are Monday-Friday from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and weekends from noon until 4 p.m. The Museum will be closed on March 16 and 17 for spring break.

For additional information, contact Dr. Stanley Grand, director of the University Museum, at (573) 651-2722.